1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to wireless communications, and more specifically to CDMA telecommunications systems.
2. Related Art
In CDMA telecommunications, the state of the art is substantially reflected in documents published by standardization bodies. The published standard that preceded the subject matter presented herein is IS-2000 Release B (“IS-2000 B”), which is hereby incorporated in its entirety by reference. According to that standard, CDMA cellular telecommunications devices may be enabled for high-speed packet data together with voice communication. An exemplary system and protocol for such services is an early step in the evolution of data-voice capabilities that may be referred to as 1×EV-DV, 1×EV-DV-enabled or simply “EV-DV,” If so, devices so enabled shall include a number of different physical channels. The method and apparatus presented herein includes improvements upon the system described in IS-2000 B, but those skilled in the wireless communications art shall recognize that the improvements are applicable to other systems as well.
As is well known, cellular communications systems generally employ portable transceivers, each of which is called a mobile station (“MS”), for user communications. Such systems are one-to-many in nature, and generally include a relatively modest number of base stations (“BSs”) that each communicate with many MSs. The BSs are disposed throughout geographical areas, as they are needed, to satisfy user demands for range and connection volume. For EV-DV services, the BS infrastructure must also satisfy user requirements for data volume.
Portable cellular transceivers are complex devices having a great deal of receive signal processing capability, as well as significant transmission capability. As any user will attest, longer battery life is always desirable for such mobile units. Accordingly, it is very desirable to avoid unnecessary power dissipation in transceiver MSs.
The extra channels added to help provide sufficient data communication capability for EV-DV-enabled MSs tend to increase power consumption. However, it is desirable to make EV-DV-enabled MSs nearly as small as less-capable cellular MSs, which means that batteries need to remain small as well. These constraints create a particular challenge to find ways to avoid power dissipation by processes that are non-essential, or that can be rendered non-essential through creative system conventions.
When seeking to reduce power consumption, attention is often focused upon transmission activities by MS transceivers because transmitting is generally performed at high powers compared to receiving. Nonetheless, despite continuing efforts heretofore, power consumption in EV-DV-enabled MSs remains undesirably high. Accordingly, a need exists to locate all processing that consumes significant power in EV-DV-enabled MSs, and to determine a way to render such processing unnecessary so that the power consumption due to such processing can be reduced or eliminated.